What makes this latest incarnation of the Batman myth so refreshing is the absence of an origin story. Every reboot of the franchise has given us a variation of Bruce Wayne witnessing the murder of his parents, and while this film draws on that tragedy as a way of trying to fathom the reclusive millionaire’s psychology ‘The Batman’ more closely resembles a police procedural or even a neo-noir detective story in the mould of ‘Strange Days’ where crime is endemic, nobody can be trusted and a masked vigilante can be more reliable, honest and resourceful than the Gotham Police Department.

With a Bernard Herrmann-inspired score and anguished voiceover that feels like it is channelling the crazed, psychopathic descent of Travis Bickle in ‘Taxi Driver’ – Bruce Wayne, like Travis, even keeps a diary in which he scribbles and reads aloud his sense of paranoia and demoralization at the sin and squalor all around him, in which he participates rather than observes from a distance – this is an impressive, if grim, rendering of the Batman legend. When dressed as the Batman, Robert Pattinson gives a foreboding, self-assured and muscular rendering of the superhero, but when dressed as Bruce Wayne he is an awkward, quite conflicted figure who spends a lot of his time watching with binoculars through the apartments of various women and criminals and admits in his voice-over confessionals that he is quite unsure of his destiny and even his sanity.

Indeed, at first we hear him speak just after an opening scene which sees the Mayor of Gotham murdered in his apartment, and we are led to think that it might be the perpetrator who is speaking rather than Batman’s alter-ego. ‘The Batman’ also channels the ‘Saw’ movies in terms of the way it gives us The Riddler who sets riddles for his prey and gives them an opportunity to extricate themselves from their predicament, but knows that they are so enmeshed in corruption that they are congenitally incapable of saving themselves by ratting on their high society associates who are always on the take and protect their own interests ahead of those of the people of Gotham.

The supernatural side of Batman, given perhaps its best expression in the Tim Burton iteration, is here replaced by a focus on the detective side to Batman’s character, placed within a serial killer milieu. Whereas the Marvel films are predilected to give us celestial battles with age-old and eternal cosmic heroes and villains drawn from Greek mythology, the DC universe is much darker and more grounded. There is precious little light relief.

‘The Batman’ is faithful throughout to the noir canon and foregrounds fatalism rather than the self-referential cleverness of the Marvel multiverse. We understand the Bat’s motivations and his need to do good in a flawed and unsympathetic universe, but having to cross the line between hero and villain in order to accomplish it. He has to go dark in order to do good, and this is a complex and three-dimensional rendering of the caped crusader whose inner demons and vices seem remarkably akin to those of us all.